A few years after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, known as the “velvet divorce”, the newly independent Slovakian state to the south was already a cause of concern. The US secretary of state at the time, Madeleine Albright, called it “the black hole” of Europe.

Eventually, in 2004 Slovakia joined the EU and Nato. The assumption then in the west was that the country, finally, had a settled identity and a settled set of alliances.

At the spot where a man tried to kill a prime minister there is a bullet hole and a small bloodstain.

Faint traces of a giant moment that has shocked Slovakia deeply. But the gunman’s target had seen this coming.

A month earlier, Robert Fico, Slovakia’s populist leader, was filmed predicting political tensions were so acute "a leading government politician" would end up getting murdered.

Then, the prime minister himself was shot. Hit four times in the stomach and arm at close range as he greeted supporters in a small former mining town.

The assassination attempt on Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, is unprecedented in the country’s history. 

But the attack, which the premier is likely to survive, speaks to an increasingly poisonous atmosphere in the central European nation of 5.5 million people.

In response to the attack, Zuzana Caputova, the country’s liberal outgoing president, and her successor Peter Pellegrini, an ally of the prime minister, have jointly called for calm. 

Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico is in critical condition after he was shot multiple times in an attempted assassination on Wednesday, according to a statement on his official Facebook page.

“He has been shot multiple times and is currently in life threatening condition,” Fico’s account stated . “The next few hours will decide.”

Slovakia’s populist prime minister and longtime leader, Robert Fico, was in critical condition after being shot multiple times at close range by an unidentified gunman, officials in the central European country said Wednesday.

The suspected gunman was apprehended after the shooting of the 59-year-old premier in the city of Handlova, east of the Slovak capital.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico is “fighting for his life” in hospital, a government official warned Wednesday, after he was shot five times in an assassination attempt.

Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák said that Fico had been in surgery for three and a half hours. “His medical state is really very complex,” he told reporters.

“We are singularly focused on the health of Robert Fico. And we are hoping he will be strong enough to pull through,” Kaliňák added.

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico is in a "life-threatening condition" in hospital after being shot in what his office has called an "assassination attempt."

"Today, after the government meeting in Handlova, there was an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Robert Fico," the government said.

Local broadcaster TA3 reported that four shots were fired in the central Slovakian town, one hitting Prime Minister Fico in the stomach.

Ukrainian counterintelligence investigators said Tuesday that they thwarted a plan by Russian agents to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other high-level officials.

Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which protects top officials, were arrested on suspicion of treason for enacting the plan, Ukraine's state security service said in a prepared statement, which added that the plot was drawn up by Russia's Federal Security Service.

Ukrainian counterintelligence investigators have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top military and political figures, Ukraine’s state security service said Tuesday.

Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which protects top officials, were detained on suspicion of enacting the plan drawn up by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, a statement said. The colonels were recruited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement.